


Batfam Halloween Content War Extras

by byebyeskylark



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, gotham is weird, haunting/spooky stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 03:33:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12762252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/byebyeskylark/pseuds/byebyeskylark
Summary: One of these is really short and the other mostly OC's talking, so they don't get their own works. But I had fun with them so, here's some Gotham weirdness.





	1. Autumn

"You can feel it too, right? The way the city changes."

The steel claws of Catwoman's gloves dug into the soft limestone where she perched on the roof's decorative capstone. Batman winced inwardly for the ruined work of the bygone craftsman, even if most of it had already been eroded by time and acid rain.

He watched her as she smiled down at the streets below them, cold and anticipatory. Like she enjoyed the way Gotham bucked the trend of every other U.S. city and became more criminally active in the fall. 

Maybe something about the heat breaking gave the mob the energy to start murdering each other again. In every other city burglaries and muggings tended to drop off in the fall and winter. So did assault and domestic violence. Not in Gotham. Everyone from the dealers, to the syndicates and gang members, to the drunks who started fights and the men who hit their partners, seemed to get a shot in the arm around late September. 

It wasn't always a big difference: some years it wasn't even statistically significant, and Batman wondered if the spreadsheets he had on the seasonality of Gotham's various types of crime were even worth maintaining. 

But every year that he'd been out on Gotham's rooftops had given him the same suspicion, the same vibe. Like the city's underbelly thought autumn was the big finale before the end of the year. Before going into hibernation after New Year's, dropping off for the worst months of winter, only to pick up again in the late spring. 

Even the biggest names in crime always had a fall lineup. 

Maybe Ivy was doing fall planting and metaphorical bed-clearing – she always seemed to break out or resurface around the equinoxes. 

But she was meaner in the fall. Her thorns were sharper, her schemes aimed to hurt more people. Did she resent the imminent long sleep of winter that she so often spent in Arkham? 

Harley often accompanied Ivy in the fall, Batman wasn't sure if it was a conscious pursuit of Halloween hijinks or some deeper compulsion. He'd once caught her stealing school supplies and dropping them – none too neatly – in poorly funded public schools. While wearing a Santa hat and beard. In October. He had wondered later if she was more active in the fall because she was remembering the high of academic success. Every fall a fresh start to a new school year.

Harvey seemed drawn to the equinoxes, too. The days that were equal parts light and dark. Bruce always meant to ask him if that was on purpose, but before he knew it Big, Bad Harv was snarling in his face and it wasn't until it was all over, and he was done feeling the loss of his friend, again, that Bruce remembered the question.

Selina, too, often returned to Gotham in the fall. 

"If I'm going to be hot I'd much rather do it somewhere that doesn't stink like this city does in the summer." she had said, when he asked. But they hadn't been in masks then, and Bruce didn't think it was the whole truth.

"Yes," he answered her, listening to the wail of sirens in the distance. The noise of squad cars and ambulances hummed through the air in the hot, humid months of summer: annoying and whiny and gnat-like. Once the temperature dropped and the winds picked up – whipping around the skyscrapers and distorting them in the thin, crisp air – then they sounded more like wolves.

Clark had once described spring to him as the smell of damp earth, and rain, and the feeling that anything was possible. Bruce had immediately thought of woodsmoke and the smell of wet, rotting leaves. He'd packed the thought away, discomforted by it. Later he realized that the feeling of possibilities was something he associated with Fall, not Spring.

Selina turned her cold grin on him, a kind of fierce joy she rarely expressed. It made his blood fizzle in his veins.

Maybe it was something intrinsic to Gotham and Gothamites, as his data sometimes, tantalizingly, seemed to suggest. 

That the dying of the year felt like the ripest season.


	2. Appointment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gotham's future is brighter, but still defended.

Meredith walked briskly from the bus stop towards her condo. She usually felt safe in Parkly, but it was past 2 AM and the neighborhood was quiet now. Mostly families that went to bed earlier than she sometimes did. She pulled her cowl higher up around her neck and savored the sound of the wind rustling the brown leaves left on the trees. It really was a beautiful corner of Gotham; she'd felt so lucky to be able to afford her little portion of the old row homes here.

Her neck prickled suddenly and she knew someone was behind her. She was already turning to look when she heard the rush of heavy feet, running.

He was a large man, backlit by the streetlight at the corner she couldn't see his face, only that he was wearing a heavy canvas jacket and boots. Maybe jeans. He must have been hiding behind the last home's hedge: he was too close to outrun now.

Meredith planted her feet wide and got low to the ground, dropping her bag to free up her hands. With her blood pounding in her ears she sucked in a breath to scream like she'd never screamed before.

A huge black mass barreled across her vision from seemingly out of nowhere. It slammed into her attacker. The barest edge of the whirling black shape's cape whipped across Meredith's cheek, feeling for a brief moment like a cut. It hit the large man so hard that he flew across the wide residential sidewalk and into the low retaining wall of her neighbor's yard. Meredith could hear his skull hit the brick with a loud crack.

All of Meredith's scream-breath left her in an astonished, loud "Haa-aah" sound. She stood, frozen, until the would-be attacker scrambled to his feet, unsteady, and stumbled away from her in a panic. She picked up her bag and sprinted the rest of the block to her condo, her head swiveling from right to left the whole way, wondering where the vigilante had gone and hyper-aware of every hint of movement in her path, jumping out of the way of a leaf scudding across the sidewalk. 

Pounding up the front steps she heard her door unlock automatically, having sensed the device on her wrist, and ran inside, throwing the bolt a hair's breath after the door said "Welcome, home," and locked the knob again for her.

Shaking, Meredith threw her bag down and pushed one portion of her drapes aside so she could watch the now-empty street. Still and dark, it belied the commotion of the stalled attack.

Instead of unlocking her wearable or giving the house systems her passcode she called out, 

"Skimbleshanks 911," the emergency override phase that would skip her usual security protocols to call the police.

Meredith was surprised she was able to speak so calmly to the dispatcher.

_______

Officers Ostrowski and Bradley arrived in less than fives minutes, having been patrolling not far away. They recorded Meredith's statement, stepping out onto the front steps so she could point out the spot where the attack had happened.

"I saw him run off – he seemed disoriented – and I ran home. I didn't see the other guy again at all." 

She paused and then asked,

"Do you think it could have been Batman? I mean, who else wears that much black these days?"

Shoniqua Bradley looked sharply at Meredith, but her partner Ayden, typing on the small holographic report form lit up before him, didn't even look up to say,

"No, he's in Luxembourg with the League, it's all over the news."

"Oh," Meredith managed to hide her disappointment. "But we don't really have any other capes in Gotham these days," she mused.

Shoni looked up the street, away from Meredith, her thumbs tucked into her pockets.

"You're sure he had a cape?" 

Ayden glanced at his partner.

"Yeah, it hit me in the face as he tackled the guy." Meredith raised a hand to brush against the cheek that still smarted slightly.

Ayden paused in his typing. Documenting new vigilantes was a pain in the ass.

"Well, I think we'll just put him down as a good samaritan," Shoni said in her Officer Bradley-est voice, and the cops wrapped up their interview, making sure Meredith had a solid security system in place and promising to send a squad car past the historic block of brick homes every hour for the rest of the night.

"Good samaritan?" Ayden said as they drove back toward the Parkly route they'd settled on earlier.

"Like you wanted to call in a new cape," Shoni answered as she steered the car through a crowd of concert-goers that had just spilled out of a theater.

"Like you ever spare me paperwork," her junior partner shot back, crossing his arms. The soft chatter of the dispatcher interrupted them briefly, but another car answered.

Shoniqua was silent for a bit. Ayden was used to the older woman taking her time to tell him things. He'd been grateful to be assigned to her. It was unusual for officers to stay on the beat as long as Shoni had, generally trading up to a desk job, but she was widely respected by the department.

"Officer Bradley knows this city in ways most cops never will," the Captain had said.

"The cape she described doesn't fit Batman's current description," she said finally.

"No," he agreed. Most of GCPD agreed that the current Batman was actually female. Or at least feminine. A sleek, pared down suit. It actually went against current trends in the cape community.

"When I was a rookie..." Shoni started. 

Ayden felt a thrill go up his spine: she never spoke about those years at length.

"...my partner took me to meet Old Sal. Miguel Salceda."

Ayden deflated internally. He had no idea who that was.

"Old Sal spent thirty years in the force. Had been retired for another twenty by the time I met him."

She lapsed into silence.

"I bet he had stories." Ayden prompted.

Shoni ran a hand over her greying, cropped-close hair and turned to look at him. They were driving slowly down another residential street, one that had had a different assault reported a few months before. She looked back out to the road.

"We don't talk about it much, in the force, but Sal and Cobb – a lot of other cops who've been on the job long enough – they think Batman patrols these streets."

"Well, yeah," Ayden looked nonplussed.

"Not Batman. _The_ Batman."

Shoni's voice was low. At odds with her usual taciturn forthrightness.

"Just sometimes, usually around this time a year you hear a story like that one we just heard. A huge, swirling cape came swinging out of nowhere and disappeared just as quickly."

"You mean...a ghost," Ayden said flatly, "He had to have died a hundred years ago at least."

Shoni ignored him.

Ayden wasn't about to tell Shoni how ridiculous she sounded. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

"So...what? He's doomed to roam Gotham with unfinished business? Sounds shitty."

She laughed, braking for a stoplight. Ayden started in surprise – she rarely laughed.

"I don't think it's like that at all. I think he just likes to check in on his city now and then. And he'll go ahead and help someone if they need it, while he's here."

They slid past closed storefronts and quiet homes in silence for two blocks.

"I know this city is weird, but I don't think it's that weird," Ayden said, trying to sound jovial instead of judgy.

Shoni smiled coldly.

"Sal could tell I longed for the glory days, like most dumb rookies."' She resisted throwing a pointed look her her partner.

"Shoni,' he'd say, 'The days of some schmuck getting ahold of a nuclear bomb and holding the city for ransom are long gone. No one in funny costumes, hardly, no huge threats. People think this city is tame now, just a regular ol' Metropolis. But they're wrong.'"

"He said, 'This city still has teeth. It always has, and it always will.'" 

She waved a couple across the crosswalk before turning right.

"'It's just that one of those teeth is _him_ , now.'"

Shoni looked over at her partner. She knew he knew what she meant about teeth. Gotham cops saw more in a few years than most cops would see in a lifetime, even with a crime rate that was no longer above the national average.

"I didn't really believe it for a long time, either. Until I got assigned to Parkly. Saw a few things myself. 

"And every story I ever heard about him – the ghost stories, I mean – they always take place in the fall, always here in Parkly."

She turned onto Hill Street.

"They didn't call it Crime Alley in his day for nothing, after all."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Park Row becomes Crime Alley becomes Parkly, but once a year he still has promises to keep.


End file.
